


Sleeping Close

by SwissArmyKnife



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Hakoda hasn't seen his children in a long time, Puppy Piles, Sokka is surprisingly versatile when he's unconscious, They surprise him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:40:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24426670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwissArmyKnife/pseuds/SwissArmyKnife
Summary: The gaang has a sleepover, and Sokka manages to reforge bonds between the four nations while he’s unconscious.
Relationships: Hakoda & Sokka (Avatar), Sokka & The Gaang (Avatar)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 460





	Sleeping Close

Hakoda was, by his nature, a light sleeper. He was a hunter of men and animals, and both were prey that could come padding up on you in the middle of the night. There were times when he could sleep deeply, but recently the only slumber that took him was a shallow pool of unconsciousness.

Even among his children this did not change.

He had not been with them for almost two years. No longer did his body know the sound of their breathing, the rustling of their blankets as they tossed in their sleep. Moreover there were others here, a pack of quasi-children, half-fledged fighters full of teeth. It didn’t make it easy to rest his bones during those first few nights. He woke easily and often found himself drifting around the great halls or standing at the edge of the precipice for long hours listening to the wind.

One such night he was pacing back to his pallet after a lonely walk when he spotted the Avatar rolling back and forth in his spot, shivering. Hakoda stopped to feel the breeze rustle his hair. It was cool night. Perhaps he should offer the boy his nest of blankets, even if he’d only ever seen the Avatar sleep on the ground.

Before he could breech the silence, however, the child sat bolt upright. With a puff of breath he hopped up from his spot and clamored around the banked fire pit, closer to where his son and daughter had laid out their bedding.

Sokka was sprawled there, half off his mat on one side, knee bent and a blanket bunched under his chin instead of properly draped over his body. He was breathing deeply, the very image of an unbothered dreamer.

To Hakoda’s surprise, it was here the Avatar blundered, half on tip-toes. Tugging the blanket free, Aang made himself at home, snuggled into Sokka’s shoulder. A heavy sigh of relief, one last tremble, and then the camp returned to silence as though nothing had happened.

Hakoda stood by one of the enormous pillars, failing to keep smile from tugging on his lips. It was sweet, really – such a kid thing to do. Yet it made him curious also.

Which was why he approached the Avatar the following morning, somewhere between morning exercises of whirling flame and pre-lunch chores. The boy hefted a bundle of dried grass to bring to his beast, and Hakoda followed. The bison grunted when Hakoda approached, a huffing whumph Hakoda wasn’t sure was friendly.

Aang patted it’s face. “Hey, buddy, be nice! That’s Katarra and Sokka’s dad, remember?”

Hakoda offered his hand to be sniffed, which the creature did with such an inhale the man felt it sucking as his palm.

“Did you need something, Hakoda, sir?” The Avatar was looking up at him with his ever-present grin still fixed on his face. Hakoda thought it managed to look older on him now than it had before the invasion, a little more careworn, but maybe that was his imagination.

“You don’t have to call me ‘sir,’ Aang,” he told the boy, pleased when the Avatar nodded. “I wanted to ask you a question about last night.”

Aang had a piece of straw stuck behind one ear, and little pieces of chaff strewn over his saffron colored clothing. He picked at them. “Last night?”

The man inclined his head. “Yes. I was up stretching my legs when I noticed you’d bedded down with Sokka. I wanted to ask why.”

The kid looked confused he’d even asked. “It was cold, and Sokka doesn’t mind sharing. It’s sorta cozy. Safe.”

Hakoda took a moment to think of his son. Bato had told him of the thoughtful young man Sokka had become, innovative and compassionate. He’d seen for himself the growing strategian, the wisdom and forward thinking. But though Hakoda had known for some time that it was Sokka, his intrepid map-reader, that had been leading this young group of travelers, he hadn’t yet thought of his boy has their leader. As a protector.

He suggested to Aang, “You might have slept with one of the others. Why not Zuko, one of the Earth Kingdom boys, or Katara?”

“Katara?” Aang squeaked, looking scandalized by the very notion. “I couldn’t. Katara’s a girl.” Then he turned the colored of stewed sea prunes, and Hakoda reflected that maybe Aang wasn’t so young after all.

Stammering, still recovering from his embarrassment, the boy rambled, “As for the others, I don’t really know the Duke and Teo that well. Zuko does sleep with us sometimes, but never unless somebody else starts it. I think he hates the cold, too.” This inspired a moment of contemplation, in which the boy scratched his chin and hem-hawed over the idea. “I guess that makes sense, him being a fire-bender, huh?”

“There is a strain of logic,” Hakoda agreed.

“Anyway, Sokka’s like a brother to me now. He never minds, so it’s okay. It’s a lot better than freezing to death.”

How could one possibly argue with that?

* * *

The second time it happened, Hakoda was stretched out somewhere on the edge of dreaming and waking. A muffled sound drew him towards full consciousness, followed by a series of jerky scuffles and an almost inaudible sob. Curious, he eased open his eyes. He was drawn to twisted covers across the blue expanse – his daughter, restless in the night.

Whispered breaths and another gasping sob. Hakoda lifted his head with concern, ready to go to her. However, before he could make up his mind to do so, the nightmare became critical and Katara jolted upward in her bed. As she clutched her breast, swaying, he could just make out her contorted face. It ran with sweat, or maybe tears, and she ducked her head over it so a thick, tangled mass of hair fell over her expression.

Oh, how he wanted to go to her, but things had been so strained between them these last days, even now that they’d made some kind of peace. And besides that, how long had it been since he’d last scooped her into his arms and comforted her with nose rubs and a few strains of a lullaby?

He hesitated a moment too long. Of her own accord, his daughter straightened from her lonely anguish, untangling the blankets, and gathering the whole bundle into her arms. She dragged them the short distance that separated her from her brother and then made up her pallet again, flush against his side. She gave him a little shove, and he grunted. Hakoda heard her call his name. “Sokka.” 

An inhale of breath and an answer, mumbled too low for Hakoda to hear. The next moment his son’s brown arm reached out for her, and she gratefully crawled back into bed. “What’s wrong?”

Timorously, his daughter answered, “Dreaming. Of that witch, and the Fire Lilies.”

Hakoda didn’t know of what they spoke; he didn’t share their history anymore. He didn’t know Hama.

“Katara.” There was a sigh, followed by the sound of near weeping. His son drew an arm closer around his sister. “Hey, don’t cry. Go back to bed. You know I need my beauty sleep.”

A hoarse, congested giggle. “All the rest in the world won’t help you.”

The man listened to his son murmuring, soft incoherent words of comfort. Watched Katara roll onto her side, head pillowed on the arm Sokka had thrown out around her. Eventually, they both drifted back into slumber, and Hakoda was left alone.

He lay there breathing, thinking of all that he had missed.

* * *

Hakoda had to wait for the third time, a little later in the same week. The blind girl – Toph, the others called her – had just begun getting around on her feet after what he was sure had seemed like a long, dark recovery to her. He watched with the others as she picked around, grinning like a catowl with cream while Sokka hovered just out of reach.

“Cut it out, you ninny.” She swatted at him when he lunged for her after one particularly drunken lurch. She was wearing a toothy, slightly manic grin. “I can ‘see’ again, haha. Take one step closer and I’ll squash you like a bug.”

She spent the rest of the day staggering around the hall, arms spread out like wings in a show of insecurity Hakoda didn’t know was unnatural for her. What he _did_ notice was the way she would sometimes stop and turn her head around as though finding it strange to be standing by herself. Brief uncertainty would flicker in her round face, only to be covered by a bellowing of insults or a suspicious rumble in the stonework that made fine streamers of sand fall down on everyone’s heads.

This quickly recalled the attention of her fellows.

Such tactics, of course, would not work at night unless she wanted everyone to wake thinking the whole mountain was coming down. Nonetheless, it was a tremor of earth that awakened Hakoda this time, a ripple of movement or sound. Sleepily, he blinked, placing his palm flat on the floor. Another ripple.

Ah, the little blind earthquake. He almost went back to sleep.

But Toph was not a subtle presence, and Hakoda could hardly miss her when she came in view from somewhere in the shadows. The girl rarely slept nearby, preferring a kind of stone tent she created herself each evening, yet now she stomped towards the others, if somewhat tenderly considering her still healing feet.

Hakoda almost couldn’t find it in him to be surprised when she stopped by his son’s pallet. He was conglobated on his side like a wolf pup that night, all tucked up with his long limbs sticking out at odd angles. The girl brought her foot down and the ground bounced, cracking Sokka open like an egg. He rolled onto his back with a sleepy sigh, hair over his eyes.

Toph dropped down perpendicular to him, propping her head against his ribs. Every time he breathed, her shoulder would lift slightly. She settled with her knees crooked, feet against the floor. Hakoda buried his nose in his elbow to keep from laughing.

* * *

It was bitterly cold again the following twilight, and Hakoda almost didn’t bother trying to sleep. As he predicted, the Avatar didn’t even make it halfway through the night before abandoning his bed. He was just finding a comfortable spot beside Sokka when another boy appeared standing over the two. Aang’s hand fluttered a feeble wave at the newcomer, then he sunk down, already half-asleep.

From his observation point, Hakoda waited while the third spread out his warm covers on Sokka’s other side. Hakoda had recognized the tall, broad-shouldered fire bender immediately, and if there remained any doubt, a break in the cloud cover removed it. A sliver of silver light illuminated the scarred face, one side so darkened that the slitted eye glinted like a bird of prey’s. And even knowing that the fire-bender was now a friend, it quickened his father’s heart, seeing him in that moment.

Then a yawn split the suddenly youthful face, and the fire-bender rubbed his eyes like a sleepy child. He sunk cross-legged onto his mat, his arms thrown around himself as he shivered. Soon they were three-in-a-row of sleeping boys. Zuko snored almost as loudly as Sokka.

Feeling ashamed, Hakoda turned over and shut his eyes.

* * *

Hakoda hadn’t been able to stop himself from confronting Zuko the following morning in what was becoming a familiar inquisition. The little earth-bender had been particularly memorable. Her green eyes had gone comically wide when he asked her what she’d been about, bedding down with his boy. Then she’d gone red, straight to her toes.

“He’s just a good pillow, that’s all,” she growled, but her fair complexion betrayed her.

Zuko turned almost the same color. “Who told you that?”

“Aang,” Hakoda answered. “Something about fire-benders and the cold.”

The former prince’s face crumbled, taking on an expression that was more troubled than irritated. He lowered his hands to his side and admitted, “Maybe. But it isn’t a big deal.”

Hakoda nodded obligingly. “I only wondered why.”

The young man snorted. They were near the precipice overlooking the cavern walls, and Zuko stared out at them fixedly as he tried to explain. “When I first came here, I wasn’t accepted. The others were willing to give me a chance, but it didn’t make me fit in. Then one night I woke up and watched Aang joining Sokka.” His face pinched, and he admitted, “I was sort of envious.”

It was a surprisingly vulnerable confession, and Hakoda looked at him with new eyes, surprised as he always was to find his view of the enemy changing.

“I asked Aang what he was doing, and he babbled this nonsense about freezing and dying and the world ending,” Zuko went on. “He told me I could join, too, and I thought he was an idiot, but it was so tempting. I was…lonely.”

Before, it would have been hard to imagine the stately, dignified prince alone in the night wishing that he could curl up with a pair of former adversaries, but since then, Hakoda had come to realize that Zuko was a deep feeling, deeply insecure young man. It made a stab of anger punch through him. Zuko made him hate Ozai more deeply than he ever had.

Hakoda urged the young man to finish his story. “And that was the end of it?” 

Zuko nodded. “Sokka never said anything. He just turned over to make space for me. It feels like he did that in the group, too – turned over to make space.”

Cozy. Comforter. Pillow. Space-maker.

His son was quite versatile when he was unconscious.

* * *

The next night Hakoda slept almost until dawn, exhausted by his frequent awakenings. When the earliest grey light woke him, he rose, stretching, and carefully bundled his pallet. Pulling on his boots, he headed for the small fountain, but to his surprise someone had beaten him to it. The young woman who had been an inmate in the same prison as Hakoda sat crouched by a fire.

“Good morning,” he murmured, pleased to find water already simmering.

The Kyoshi girl nodded in greeting, but even in the weak light he could tell her eyes were transfixed on something else. Hakoda tracked them, grinning when he spied the object of her interest. There to the side, where Sokka always made his bed, five young people were curled in a pile of softly snoozing bodies, blankets, and warm breaths. He paused to wonder how long it had been since such a guileless display had been seen, a cuddle of puppies with a representative from every nation.

“It’s sort of sweet, isn’t it?” He smiled as he spoke the word, but nothing else seemed as appropriate.

Suki shifted the kettle. “They’ve been through a lot together. An incredible journey. And they’ve all changed.”

She was speaking of his boy in particular, he knew. It was true of them all, but she was connected to the center of that pile – to Sokka, his gawky, feckless, no-long-so-little son.

“I asked them why they all curl up around Sokka,” he shared. “Because of the cold, because of nightmares, because he makes a good pillow.” He nodded at the Fire Nation prince. “Because he’s lonely. Different answers –”

“But really because of Sokka,” Suki interrupted.

“He’s taken care of them,” Hakoda agreed, and he was proud, proud of his boy. Proud that he’d looked after his sister and the Avatar, that he made the touchy earth-bender blush. That’d he’d been able to befriend a former enemy and make a place for him in a way that Zuko could accept. The funny thing was, it probably wouldn’t have worked if Sokka had done half of it on purpose.

“It’s what I liked most about him,” Suki said. “I liked who he was when he stopped trying so hard. What he didn’t realize about himself made him seem special.”

His daughter gave a little murmur, turning her head to bury her cheek against her brother’s arm. The Avatar squirmed in response, wedging himself more firmly between them. On the other side, Toph dug her forehead brutally into Sokka’s belly, scowling as her grip on his shirt tightened. Zuko stirred restlessly, turning over in his sleep. When he settled, his back was firmly against Sokka. Then their breathing lengthened, the stillness recast.

Sokka hadn’t so much as twitched the entire time.

Suki giggled. “May the real reason they crowd around him is because they know he sleeps like the dead.”

Hakoda observed her watchful gaze, which hadn’t left the human tangle. There was longing in that look, maybe. He thought about the way his son had sighed after this young lady that day on the trellis as they made their escape from the Boiling Rock, and he felt another bout of wistfulness; so much missed while he was away from his children.

He looked again at the gaggle, and particularly at the closeness of them all. The earthbending girl with her nose in Sokka’s stomach, sister and friends near enough to touch. He asked, “Does it make you jealous?”

Suki had a lovely laugh, melodic and full. “No. Would you like to know why?”

Hakoda looked at the row of small, pretty teeth, grinning just a little too wide. Mischief shown in her eyes. He obliged, “Why?”

She stood, stretching. There was a smear of yellow just at the edge of the horizon, but it was very early yet. Early enough that their companions might lay in a bit longer. She swayed over to them and gave Aang a shove with her foot. Without hesitation she nudged and prodded a narrow place for herself and unabashedly sunk into the space by Sokka’s side. The group adjusted with barely an altered breath.

Smug, Suki snuggled under Sokka’s chin, readjusting the blanket. She whispered to Hakoda, “I’ll make my own way here.”

Nuzzling into his boy’s neck in what Hakoda considered a very forward way, she closed her eyes. Very soon she joined the sleeping mass and once again the older man found himself alone in the echoing corridors. Then it was he who felt a pang of loneliness, a passing desire that he could still be young enough sink into that group. But no, his days of puppyhood were long past.

Still, he was glad to be back near his wandering children. So he could finally become reacquainted with the strong, beautiful young woman who had blossomed from his daughter…and the zealous, remarkable guardian that he was beginning to see in his son.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t the slightest clue where this came from, except that when I watched 3:9 – _Nightmares and Dreams_ I really wanted someone to give Aang a teddy bear and bunk up with him. This story takes place after episode 3:14 – _The Boiling Rock._
> 
> This story has fanart! Thank you to LuverzNDFriendz for her incredible work, seen [here](https://www.deviantart.com/luverzndfriendz/art/Like-A-Cuddle-of-Puppies-92713208).


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